"Jeffrey Hatcher's Hamlet"

"Jeffrey Hatcher's Hamlet," the latest work by Minnesota’s own acclaimed playwright, premiered last summer as part of Minneapolis-based Illusion Theater’s Fresh Ink series. Now Hatcher hits the road with his one-man show and travels to Duluth where he’ll perform for one night only on March 24 at UMD’s Marshall Performing Arts Center.

When Hatcher was 11 years old, he adapted, directed and performed in one of Shakespeare’s greatest dramas, Hamlet. It was staged in the fifth grade English class of Stark Elementary School in Steubenville, Ohio. It starred every student in the class. The audience consisted of teachers, parents and other kids. The first show sold out, so they added a second. It, too, sold out. It was Hatcher’s first hit.

Flash-forward to 2014 while Hatcher re-visits that experience. He said, “The play is a one person show called ‘Jeffrey Hatcher's Hamlet,' all lunatic egocentric pomposity intended. I'll play myself telling the story, with its ups and downs, its disasters and triumphs and life lessons – all scaled to the fifth grade, naturally. It will be about theater as a home, as a refuge, and as a platform. It will be about time and place and politics – an Ohio steel town in the mid-60s. It will be about people who reveal themselves, their talents and weaknesses, when put through the pressure-cooker of putting on the world's greatest play in circumstances not likely to have been repeated since.”

Written by and starring Jeffrey Hatcher. Directed by Michael Robins. Tickets: $10 adults, $5 students.